Where I Work
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Notes from Faith Zeng: So I’ve been working at MetLife, and a large part of what I do is help the other designers finish their projects. On my first day I browsed the MetLife brand center that’s only available to the designers, and I got a sense of how MetLife markets itself to both have an impact on potential consumers and be aesthetically appealing. There are a lot of meticulous guidelines to be followed, like specific palettes, how the Snoopy trademark must relate to the MetLife logo in size, and guidelines on which stock photos should be picked. There are even restrictions on how the Snoopy image is to be used–the image is not to be flipped, there is no shading, the lines can’t be edited, it can’t be too close to the word MetLife, the colors can’t be inverted, you can’t use any different Snoopy images, etc, etc… It surprised me how creative the designers here can get even with the restrictions, and how attractive the brochures can actually be. They even won an award for one of them.
In the beginning I just watched a lot of lynda.com tutorials for InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator, played around with one of the brochures that the designers are working on, and cleaned up the studios and work stations. I’m currently working on research for a project in New York. MetLife occupies a new space in Manhattan, at 1095 Avenue of the Americas, and on the ground level of the building exists vacant retail space. The designers did some concepting around making the space innovative and unique–an interesting opportunity to invite passersby to interact with MetLife and the space itself. The space design would be a temporary measure until it’s occupied. Two of the designers here, Emily and James, came up with some ideas, which they have been asked to pursue from a logistical and cost perspective. Of their ideas, the client went with covering the windows with solid colors from the MetLife palettes, and projecting animations of Snoopy and Woodstock onto the glass that would interact with the people walking by. My job is to find the products and services that could actually make this possible. After my loads of research and extensive googling, I’ve found quite a bit of stuff on rear projections onto glass and colored window tints, and I’m now working on organizing that information in an attractive way in InDesign for the client.
Overall I’m learning a lot, and having a lot of fun with this project!